Biography

Dr. Stuart Cohen is a retired Professor from the University of Arizona. He relocated permanently to Spain in 2012. An educational psychologist by training, Stuart J. Cohen, EdD, held the Canyon Ranch Endowed Chair in Lifestyle and Behavioral Health and was a Professor of Public Health and Medicine at the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, at the University of Arizona. For 28 years, he worked with a wide variety of community-based organizations on ways to improve health promotion and disease prevention. He served as the Principal or Co-Principal Investigator of large-scale, behavior change interventions trials. His intervention research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), formerly the Agency for Health Care, Policy, and Research. These projects have involved such issues as: increasing physical activity by sedentary adults (Activity Counseling Trial [ACT]- NHLBI); improving the quality of diabetes care and self-management for minority populations (Project DIRECT - CDC); increasing the percentage of age-eligible adults who receive recommended cancer screening (Prescribe for Health - AHRQ); fostering adherence to guidelines for well-child visits and services that primary care clinicians provide to young children from indigent families (Health Passport - Packard Foundation); identifying effective and practical methods that physicians and dentists can use in helping their patients quit smoking (Providers Helping Smokers - National Cancer Institute) and dietary sodium reduction in the management of essential hypertension (NHLBI). Dr. Cohen has been involved in a series of studies on patient empowerment. With funding from the National Institute on Aging, he and his colleague, Dr. Elizabeth Dugan, developed and field-tested a "Health Guide" for older adults. The goal of the Health Guide is to help older adults stay as healthy as possible and communicate more effectively with their health care providers. Dr. Cohen was the PI of the Border Health Strategic Initiative (BHSI), a community-based, comprehensive approach to diabetes prevention and control targeting a high-risk, predominantly Hispanic population on the Arizona/Mexico border. The results of all the components of the BHSI were published in the CDC's journal, Preventing Chronic Disease: Cohen SJ, Ingram M. The Border Health Strategic Initiative: Overview and Introduction to a Community-Based Model for Diabetes Prevention and Control. Preventing Chronic Disease, 2005, Jan. URL: http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2005/jan/toc.htm